The McCone Files

by Marcia Muller

  Tilby suddenly stood up. “The son of a bitch! After all we’ve done—”

  “John!” Corinne touched his elbow with her hand.

  “John,” I said, “why was your cousin staying at the hotel in the Haight?”

  He looked at me blankly for a moment. “What? Oh, I don’t know. He claimed he wanted to see how it had changed since he’d lived there.”

  “I thought you grew up together on your father’s ranch near Clayton and then went to Los Angeles.”

  “We did. Gary lived on the Haight before we left the Bay Area.”

  “I see. Now, you say he ‘claimed’ that was the reason. Was there something else?”

  Tilby was silent, then looked at Corinne. She shrugged.

  “I guess,” he said finally, “he’d had about all he could take of us. As you may have noticed, we’re not exactly a congenial group lately.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why is what?”

  “That you’re all at odds? It hasn’t always been this way, has it?”

  This time Tilby shrugged. Corinne was silent, looking down at her clasped hands.

  I sighed, silently empathizing with Fitzgerald’s desire to get away from these people. I myself was sick of their bickering, lies, backbiting, and evasions. And I knew I could get nowhere with them—at least not now. Better to wait until I could talk with Kabalka, see if he were willing to keep on employing me. Then, if he was, I could start fresh.

  I stood up, saying, “The Contra Costa authorities will be contacting you. I’d advise you to be as frank as possible with them.” To Corinne, I added, “Wayne will want a personal report from me when he comes back; ask him to call me at home.” I took out a card with both my All Souls and home number, laid it on the coffee table, and started for the door.

  As I let myself out, I glanced back at them. Tilby stood with his arms folded across his chest, looking down at Corinne. They were as still as statues, their eyes locked, their expressions bleak and helpless.

  Of course, by the time I got home to my brown-shingled cottage the desire to sleep had left me. It was always that way when I harbored nagging unanswered questions. Instead of going to bed and forcing myself to rest, I made coffee and took a cup of it out on the back porch to think.

  It was a sunny, clear morning and already getting hot. The neighborhood was Saturday noisy: to one side, my neighbors, the Halls, were doing something to their backyard shed that involved a lot of hammering; on the other side, the Curleys’ dog was barking excitedly. Probably, I thought, my cat was deviling the dog by prancing along the top of the fence, just out of his reach. It was Watney’s favorite game lately.

  Sure enough, in a few minutes there was a thump as Wat dropped down from the fence onto an upturned half barrel I’d been meaning to make into a planter. His black-and white spotted fur was full of foxtails; undoubtedly he’d been prowling around in the weeds at the back of the Curleys’ lot.

  “Come here, you,” I said to him. He stared at me, tail swishing back and forth. “Come here!” He hesitated, then galloped up. I managed to pull one of the foxtails from the ruff of fur over his collar before he trotted off again, his belly swaying pendulously, a great big horse of a cat….

  I sat staring at the foxtail, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger, not really seeing it. Instead, I pictured the hills surrounding the pavilion as I’d seen them the night before. The hills that were dotted with oak and madrone and chaparral…that were sprinkled with people on horses…where a lone horseman had stood under the sheltering branches of tree, his binoculars like a signal flare in the setting sun…

  I got up and went inside to the phone. First I called the Contra Costa sheriff’s deputy who had been in charge of the crime scene at the pavilion. No, he told me, the dead man hadn’t been identified yet; the only personal item he had been carrying was a bus ticket—issued yesterday—from San Francisco to Concord which had been tucked into his shoe. While this indicated he was not a resident of the area, it told them nothing else. They were still hoping to get identification on his fingerprints, however.

  Next I called the pavilion and got the home phone of Jim Hayes, the guard who had been on the performers’ gate when Fitzgerald had vanished. When Hayes answered my call, he sounded as if I’d woken him, but he was willing to answer my questions.

  “When Fitzgerald left he was wearing his costume, right?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What about makeup?”

  “No. I’d have noticed that; it would have seemed strange, him leaving with his face all painted.”

  “Now, last night you said you thought he’d come back in a few minutes after you returned from your break. Did he show you his pass?”

  “Yes, everyone had to show one. But—”

  “Did you look at the name on it?”

  “Not closely. I just checked to see if it was valid for that date. Now I wish I had looked, because I’m not sure it was Fitzgerald. The costume seemed the same, but I just don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there was something different about the man who came in. He walked funny. The guy you found murdered, he was crippled.”

  So that observation might or might not be valid. The idea that the man walked “funny” could have been planted in Hayes’ mind by his knowing the dead man was cripple. “Anything else?”

  He hesitated. “I think…yes. You asked if Gary Fitzgerald was wearing makeup when he left. And he wasn’t. But the guy who came in, he was made up. That’s why I don’t think it was Fitzgerald.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hayes. That’s all I need to know.”

  I hung up the phone, grabbed my bag and car keys, and drove back out to the pavilion in record time.

  The heat-hazed parking lots were empty today, save for a couple of trucks that I assumed belonged to the maintenance crew. The gates were locked, the box office windows shuttered, and I could see no one. That didn’t matter, however. What I was interested in lay outside the chain-link fence. I parked the MG near the trucks and went around the perimeter of the amphitheater to the area near the performers’ gate, then looked up at the hill to the east. There was a fire break cut through the high wheat-colored grass, and I started up it.

  Halfway to the top, I stopped, wiping sweat from my forehead and looking down at the pavilion. Visibility was good from here. Pivoting, I surveyed the surrounding area. To the west lay a monotonous grid-like pattern of tracts and shopping centers, broken here and there by hills and the up thrusting skyline of Walnut Creek. To the north I could see smoke billowing from the stacks of the paper plant at Antioch, and the bridge spanning the river toward the Sacramento Delta. Further east, the majestic bulk of Mount Diablo rose; between it and the foothill were more hills and hollows—ranch country.

  The hill on which I stood was only lightly wooded, but there was an outcropping of rock surrounded by madrone and live oak about a hundred yards to the south on a direct line from the tree where the lone horseman with the signal-like binoculars had stood. I left the relatively easy footing of the fire break and waded through the dry grass toward it. It was cool and deeply shadowed under the branches of the trees, and the air smelled of vegetation gone dry and brittle. I stood still for a moment, wiping the sweat away once more, than began to look around. What I was searching for was wedged behind a low rock that formed a sort of table; a couple of tissues smeared with makeup. Black and red and white greasepaint—the theatrical makeup of a clown.

  The dead man had probably used this rock as a dressing table, applying what Fitzgerald had brought him in the canvas bag. I remember Gary’s insistence on taking the bag with him to the men’s room; of course he needed it; the makeup was a necessary prop to their plan. While Fitzgerald could leave the pavilion without his greasepaint, the other man couldn’t enter un-made-up; there was too much of a risk that the guard might notice the face didn’t match the costume or the name on the pass.

  I looked down at the dry leaves beneath my
feet. Oak, and madrone, and brittle needles of chaparral. And the foxtails would have been acquired while pushing through the high grass between here and the bottom of the hill. That told me the route the dead man had taken, but not what had happened to Fitzgerald. In order to find that out, I’d have to learn where one could rent a horse.

  I stopped at a feed store in the little village of Hillside, nestled in a wooded hollow southeast of the pavilion. It was all you could expect of a country store, with wood floors and big sacks and bins of feed. The weather-beaten old man in overalls who looked up from the saddle he was polishing completed the rustic picture.

  He said, “Help you with something?”

  I took a closer look at the saddle, then glanced around at the hand-tooled leather goods hanging from hooks on the far wall. “That’s beautiful work. Do you do it yourself?”

  “Sure do.”

  “How much does a saddle like that go for these days?” My experience with horses had ended with lessons I’d taken in junior high school.

  “Custom job like this, five hundred, thereabouts.”

  “Five hundred! That’s more than I could get for my car.”

  “Well…” He glanced through the door at the MG.

  “I know. You don’t have to say another word.”

  “It runs, don’t it?”

  “Usually.” Rapport established, I got down to business. “What I need is some information. I’m looking for a stable that rents horses.”

  “You want to set up a party or something?”

  “I might.”

  “Well, there’s MacMillan’s, on the south side of town. I wouldn’t recommend them, though. They’ve got some mean horses. This would be for a bunch of city folks?”

  “I wasn’t aware it showed.”

  “Doesn’t, all that much. But I’m good at figuring out about folks. You don’t look like a suburban lady, and you don’t look country either.” He smiled at me and I nodded and smiled to compliment his deductive ability. “No,” he went on. “I wouldn’t recommend MacMillan’s if you have folks along who maybe don’t ride so good. Some of those horses are mean enough to kick a person from here to San Jose. The place to go is Wheeler’s; they got some fine mounts.”

  “Where is Wheeler’s?”

  “South, too, a couple of miles beyond MacMillan’s. You’ll know it by the sign.”

  I thanked him and started out. “Hey!” he called after me. “When you have your party, bring your city friends by. I got a nice selection of hand tooled belts and wallets.”

  I said I would, and waved at him as I drove off.

  About a mile down the road on the south side of the little hamlet stood a tumble-down stable with a hand-lettered sign advertising horses for rent. The poorly recommended MacMillan’s, no doubt. There wasn’t an animal, mean or otherwise, in sight, but a large, jowly woman who resembled a bulldog greeted me, pitchfork in hand.

  I told her the story that I’d hastily made up on the drive: a friend of mine had rented a horse the night before to ride up on the hill and watch the show at the Diablo Valley Pavilion. He had been impressed with the horse and the stable it had come from, but couldn’t remember the name of the place. Had she, by any chance, rented to him? As I spoke, the woman began to frown, looking more and more like a pugnacious canine every minute.

  “It’s not honest,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s not honest, people riding up there and watching for free. Stealing’s stealing, no matter what name you put on it. Your Bible tells you that.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of any reply to that, although she was probably right.

  She eyed me severely, as if she suspected me of pagan practices. “In answer to your question, no, I wouldn’t let a person near one of my horses if he was going to ride up there and watch.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose my friend admitted what he planned to do—”

  “Any decent person would be too ashamed to admit to a thing like that.” She motioned aggressively with the pitchfork.

  I took a step backwards. “But maybe you rented to him not knowing—”

  “You going to do the same thing?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to ride up there for tonight’s concert?”

  “Me? No ma’am. I don’t even ride all that well. I just wanted to find out if my friend had rented his horse from—”

  “Well, he didn’t rent the horse from here. We aren’t even open evenings, don’t want our horses out in the dark with people like you who can’t ride. Besides, even if people don’t plan it, those concerts are an awful temptation. And I can’t sanction that sort of thing. I’m a born-again Christian, and I won’t help people go against the Lord’s word.”

  “You know,” I said hastily, “I agree with you. And I’m going to talk with my friend about his behavior. But I still want to know where he got his horse. Are that any other stables around here besides yours?”

  The woman looked somewhat mollified. “There’s only Wheeler’s. They do a big business—trail trips on Mount Diablo, hayrides in the fall. And, of course, folks who want to sneak up to that pavilion. They’d rent to a person who was going to rob a bank on horseback if there was enough money in it.”

  Stifling a grin, I started for my car. “Thanks for the information.”

  “You’re welcome to it. But you remember to talk to your friend, tell him to mend his ways.”

  I smiled and got out of there in a hurry.

  Next to MacMillan’s, Wheeler’s Riding Stables looked prosperous and attractive. The red barn was freshly painted, and a couple of dozen healthy, sleek horses, grazed within white rail fences. I rumbled down a dirt driveway and over a little bridge that spanned a gully, and parked in front of a door labeled OFFICE. Inside, a blond-haired man in faded Levi’s and a t-shirt lounged in a canvas chair behind the counter, reading a copy of Playboy. He put it aside reluctantly when I came in.

  I was tired of my manufactured story, and this man looked like someone I could be straightforward with. I showed him the photostat of my license and said, “I’m cooperating with the county sheriff’s department on the death at the Diablo Valley Pavilion last night. You’ve heard about it?”

  “Yes, it made the morning news.’

  “I have reason to believe that the dead man may have rented a horse prior to the show last night.”

  The man raised a sun-bleached eyebrow and waited, as economical with his words as the woman at MacMillan’s had been spendthrift.

  “Did you rent any horses last night?”

  “Five. Four to a party, another later one.”

  “Who rented the single horse?”

  “Tall, thin guy. Wore jeans and a plaid shirt. At first I thought I knew him.”

  “Why.”

  “He looked familiar, like someone who used to live near here. But then I realized it couldn’t be. His face was disfigured, his arm crippled up, and he limped. Had trouble getting on the horse, but once he was mounted, I could tell he was a good rider.”

  I felt a flash of excitement, the kind you get when things start coming together the way you’ve hoped they would. “That’s the man who was killed.”

  “Well, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Horse came back this morning, riderless.”

  “What time?”

  “Oh, around five, five thirty.”

  That didn’t fit the way I wanted to. “Do you keep a record of who you rent the horses to?”

  “Name and address. And we take a deposit that’s returned when they bring the horses back.”

  “Can you look up the man’s name?”

  He grinned and reached under the counter for a loose-leaf notebook. “I can, but I don’t think it will help you identify him. I noted it at the time—Tom Smith. Sounded like a phony.”

  “But you still rented to him?”

  “Sure. I just asked for double the deposit. He didn’t look too prosp
erous, so I figured he’d be back. Beside, none of our horses are so terrific that anyone would trouble to steal one.”

  I stood there for a few seconds, tapping my fingers on the counter. “You said you thought he was someone you used to know.”

  “At first, but the guy I knew wasn’t crippled. Must have been a chance resemblance.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Fellow who lived on a ranch near here back in the late sixties. Gary Fitzgerald.”

  I stared at him.

  “But like I said, Gary Fitzgerald wasn’t crippled.”

  “Did this Gary have a cousin?” I asked.

  “Yeah, John Tilby. Tilby’s dad owned a dairy ranch. Gary lived with them.”

  “When did Gary leave here?”

  “After the old man died. The ranch was sold to pay the debts and both Gary and John took off. For Southern California.” He grinned again. “Probably had some cockeyed idea about getting into show business.”

  “By any chance, do you know who was starring on the bill at the pavilion last night?”

  “Don’t recall, no. It was some kind of kid show, wasn’t it?”

  “A clown festival.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged. “Clowns don’t interest me. Why?”

  “No reason.” Things definitely weren’t fitting together the way I’d wanted them to. “You say the cousins took off together after John Tilby’s father died.”

  “Yes.”

  “And went to Southern California.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Did Gary Fitzgerald ever live in the Haight-Ashbury?”

  He hesitated. “Not unless they went there instead of L.A. But I can’t see Gary in the Haight, especially back then. He was just a country boy, if you know what I mean. But what’s all this about him and John? I thought—“

  “How much to rent a horse?”

  The man’s curiosity was easily sidetracked by business. “Ten an hour. Twenty for the deposit.”

  “Do you have a gentle one?”

  “You mean for you? Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got all kinds, gentle or lively.”

  I took out my wallet and checked it. Luckily, I had a little under forty dollars. “I’ll take the gentlest one.”